Is stupidity or malevolence behind the policy of distributing Central American illegal alien children around the country among the general population? The question must be asked because alarming numbers of these unfortunates are carrying tuberculosis, a lethal disease that had largely been eradicated from the United States.

At the Chicago Boyz blog, Trent Talenko writes,  America’s Impending Tuberculosis Epidemic, which should scare the heck out of you, because it contains some serious epidemiological information.

…this idea of TB positive illegal alien children released to illegal immigrant parents scares the heck out of me from the point of view of epidemiology. In the 1920’s TB was the eighth leading cause of death for children 1-to-4 years old. Since then American public health has been so effective in preventing it that the USA no longer has any “herd immunity” to TB.

This “catch and release” illegal alien policy is horrible from the infectious disease point of view in that phlegm or aerosolized sputum that are contaminated withMycobacterium tuberculosis are active biohazards that have long latent infection periods. This makes “exposure” very easy. The clinical definition of TB Exposure — which I found in a University of Vanderbilt student medical file PDF — is the following:

“A person is considered to be exposed if there is shared breathing space with someone with infectious pulmonary or laryngeal tuberculosis at a time when the infectious person is not wearing a mask and the other person is not wearing an N95 respirator. Usually a person has to be in close contact with someone with infectious tuberculosis for a long period of time to become infected; however, some people do become infected after short periods, especially if the contact is in a closed or poorly ventilated space.”

For example, riding on a bus or an airplane from the Texas border to, say, San Diego or Boston. Or warehousing children in close quarters on military bases. So, we get prolonged exposure in a poorly ventilated place, and then distribution across the United States. And expose our armed forces to potentially lethal and difficult-to-treat highly infectious diseases, Supidity would be the charitable explanation for such a policy.

After a detailed and alarming exploration of the problems involved with identifying and then treating TB spreading, Talenko offers the following warning signs to watch for:

THINGS TO LOOK FOR
Forewarned is forearmed, so here are a list of “The TB Epidemic is here markers” to put in your social media and RSS feeds in terms of near future events –

• Mass orders of N95 masks by State, Federal or Military health systems.
• Mass orders of BCG vaccine by State, Federal or Military health systems.
• Shortages/price spike of the list of 10 standard TB antibiotics
• “Cone of silence” media reporting of TB in public hospitals or school stories that exclude the mention of illegal alien TB sufferers.
• Border Patrol Agent or health worker families becoming infected with TB from immigrant processing centers

Given the numbers of illegal immigrant children already released by the Obama Administration — and the further numbers it wants to release before President Obama leaves office — the only thing you can say for certain about the coming TB epidemic is that it is inevitable.

Hat tip: Instapundit